


Medela

by mahuika



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, Stillbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 02:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3710881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahuika/pseuds/mahuika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It surprises him, as it always has, how resilient a heart can be when he’s so used to seeing them ripped out and half-beating in his hand. </p><p>--</p><p>Varania is invited to meet her niece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Medela

**Author's Note:**

> This was intended to be a tiny baby fic about Fenris really liking his kid. Then it got longer and somehow Varania ended up in there and I'm not really sure how it goes but I think it more or less makes sense. Mostly.
> 
> Listening to: [Goldmund - Shenandoah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAR8I3thNlE), [Sleeping At Last - Turning Pages](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKBfsz3P7Us) and [Clint Mansell - Together We Will Live Forever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swAicg0GjNg)

* * *

 

I have wished a bird would fly away,  
And not sing by my house all day;  
Have clapped my hands at him from the door  
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.  
The fault must partly have been in me.  
The bird was not to blame for his key.  
And of course there must be something wrong  
In wanting to silence any song.

                  - a minor bird, Robert Frost

* * *

 

“This is A…like in Papa. This is – E? And this…” His daughter scrunches her nose up and jabs at the paper he’s writing on. “This is a squiggle,” she finally declares, and sits back.

“It is a ‘v’.”

“Can’t be V. It’s a squiggle.”

Fenris frowns and touches his fingers under her chin to turn her head back to their task. “It is a ‘v’. Try again.”

She mirrors his frown, and he has to tuck a lock of her hair back behind her ear to see. It’s slipped from the red ribbon that ties the end of her plait – though slipped would be an understatement; half of it seems to have fallen over her eyes and the other half is caught up in a bird’s nest at the back and the overall effect makes her look vaguely like she’s been pulled through a hedge backwards.

Her eyes are green and scowling, and they dart back to meet his to make sure he’s noticed her disapproval. Green like his but not as green – more hazel. His but not his. There are hazel eyes in his head now, angry and hurt and hidden by red hair –

His daughter is whacking the paper with her fist. “V,” he gently says again, and shakes from his shoulders the thoughts of an aunt that will never meet her niece.

“Squigg –“

“ _Must_ you be so insufferable?”

“I’m not in-suff-rable. I’m very sufferable. Mama says so.”

“Does she now?”

“Does she what? Maker, what have you done to your hair?”

They look up as Hawke leans against the doorway of the little room. There is dirt on her clothes, under her fingernails; some of it is sprinkled across her nose like paint. She raises an eyebrow at the two of them. "I dig up one row of potatoes and you end up looking like that?"

Their daughter looks guilty. “I was playing!”

“Where?”

Guilt gives way to defense. “Outside.”

“ _Maeve._ ”

She sighs and hangs her head. “In the hedge.”

“Ah.”

Fenris shrugs.

* * *

 He should have expected it, he thinks now as he lies almost nose-to-nose with his daughter while she sleeps. He should have expected the changes her arrival would bring. It was happiness that first sparked the rewiring of his forgotten memories – the pleasure of Hawke tangled around him, her hands on his skin, the taste of her –

As if his mind had woken up and was saying

_I know this._

_This is love. This is happiness. You know this too; let me show you._

Flashes, then; faces and names of his family but not together. He remembered more over the years – shook the dust from scattered memories as he spent more time with Hawke and became familiar again with what it was to be happy.

If like begot like it went some way to explain the crush of images that filled his head after his daughter was born; faces and smells and sounds tripping over one another – copper coins clinking as they were tipped into a merchant’s hand, the tang of the liniment his mother rubbed into his cracked heels, dirt and grime under his nails that he could never get out – _l_ _ook at you, look at the state of you, what will he say when he sees you like this -_ an overflow of information that left him rooted to the floor, short of breath; able to do little but crawl into bed beside Hawke and the baby; to sleep if he could, or try and sort through the jarring fragments in his head.

It hurt, almost, not just for the life he had lost but for the exhausting assault against his senses everywhere he turned. The baby’s eyes were Varania’s, her cry was the wail of something wild in the Seheron jungle, Hawke’s hands in his were the hands of the child he played with in Minrathous, left lying in the blood-soaked dust in the market, fingers grasping at the dirt –

Some memories he wishes had stayed forgotten.

Maeve mumbles and her eyes scrunch further closed. A grumpy sleeper still, even now when she’s four and something. Her eyelashes are dark, unbelievably long, and they flutter against her skin (his, more than Hawke’s – tanned and warm like she was born in the tropics; he thinks the freckles are her own, though.)

He tilts his face to her, presses his lips to the curve of her cheek where her eyelashes touch her skin, first one side and then the other.

His heart feels very full.

He should have expected the effect his daughter’s arrival would have on him. His most profound moment of happiness, of love, of feeling like he was meeting both his child and himself for the first time – it was bound to set another spark among his memories. He couldn’t have expected just how much. He supposes that’s the crux of it, as Maeve reaches for him in her sleep, curls her fists into his shirt. He pulls her closer, tucking her head underneath his chin. He couldn’t have expected what the result of loving his daughter would be, because he couldn’t have expected loving his daughter as greatly as it turned out he did.

He thought he loved Hawke; thought his heart was filled up with her. He found evidence in that his thoughts concerned another more often than they did him, that he saw his wellbeing was now secondary and always would be. Because how could this be undone? All of him was hers; he would claw out his heart himself and hand it to her if she asked it of him. How could he untangle the parts of them that were separate when he was sure every part belonged to her?

He had mentioned this to Hawke one night, in the frank, direct manner that still made her cheeks flush and her heart skip two beats – or three or four, if he was staring at her whilst speaking (it was usually three or four).

He’d said he thought the belonging-feeling and the tangling and all the thinking meant he was in love with her; she had answered (after some counting of heartbeats) that yes, it probably did mean that. And it had all been going rather well, their discussion, until he had mentioned Danarius’s name and the look of horror on Hawke’s face threw him.

 _"Is **that** why you wear my crest!?"_   _She shrieked._

He had meant it as a comparison, to show the difference between a self given and a self taken – _I choose you, I want you; you have all of me –_ but it had taken days before she would touch him again, weeks before she raised her voice and a solid month and a half before she outright ordered him to carry his share of the day’s scavenging (“You just don’t understand how much I _need_ this pair of torn trousers.”)

Talk of feelings and the like had gone somewhat smoother since then, as long as he tried to mostly avoid comparing her to former slave masters.

And for a very long time he remained convinced that loving Hawke was the entirety; his heart was full with her, and he did not have the capability to love another or even to bring another person into his consideration, not when any spare time for thinking was taken up firstly by her, then himself, and then the assortment of Hawke’s companions that he supposed were his friends. And Anders.

During Hawke’s pregnancy he had felt the early stirrings of instinct, of a very old voice that said _protect this; this is yours. Keep it safe._ But it frightened him, more than he could say out loud because the voice had spoken before and there had been tiny hands, tiny feet smaller than Maeve’s ever were, lost to something he couldn’t protect them from and he still saw the horror of death on Hawke’s face when he slept and he still woke with blood on his hands and her choked cries in his ears and -

Then the voice called again.

And all he wanted was to keep her from the grief, and he would not allow a space in his heart for a child that could cause her such agony. He pushed his own pain down as secondary; shoved it aside to pick up when he had the time and the will to face it. But then he met his daughter’s eyes, safe and _there_ and he felt his heart break and be remade all over again and _what was this_ and how, with this tiny slip of a thing, how could it be possible to feel so much love for something when he had so little experience of it in his life and he was sure his heart would collapse from the weight upon his chest –

And this was _love._ This was purpose and reason and devotion in a tiny, warm person, and in the weeks following Maeve’s arrival he was sure if someone were to ask him who he was he would show them his daughter and say

_this._

He still loved Hawke; knew he did – he was sure the very bones of him loved hers – yet this was _different_ , in a way that he couldn’t explain.

He’d tried to, one night after too much wine, when the effects of the alcohol convinced him he owed it to Hawke to confess, _now_ before he sobered up enough to reconsider a poor decision _._

It was in the cold months after Maeve’s birth, and they had settled into something of a tenuous routine of life. Fenris was returning home after an evening playing cards with Donnic had turned into the better part of a night playing cards and drinking and forgetting to play cards and just drinking. It was house wine, cheap and nasty stuff ‘from the arse end of Antiva!’, but it did the job and after two bottles you didn’t really notice the sediment.

Hawke was up, sitting at the table nursing Maeve, and blinking sleepily at her daughter’s head as if she was mildly surprised at what she was holding. She gave Fenris a crooked smile as he ambled in.

“Morning,” she said as he sat opposite her. Her peered at the two of them, nodded and then lurched forward to pat Hawke’s hand in what he thought was a comforting manner. “It’s late.”

“It is. Why are you patting me?”

“I’m…comforting.” He sounded hopeful.

“Sure.” She shrugged and he dropped back into his chair. “You’ve missed all the fun. We’ve slept a lot, ate enough to last a week, and spent half an hour lying face down crying for no reason. Maeve, too. Though it was just me who ate the currant cakes.”

“It’s not uncommon, I believe.” Fenris rubbed his neck and watched them as Hawke shifted the baby to her shoulder and patted her back. “It may take some time before you feel…yourself again.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been swapping midwifery tips with the sisters down at the chantry. Perish the thought. Here, can you take her? I’m just going to sit here and stagnate a bit.”

He leaned forward as Hawke passed the baby to him, and settled back in the chair with her in the crook of his elbow, re-tucking Merrill’s knitted blanket around her as he did; woolly nugs and dandelions alike dancing with the movement. She spared him one roaming glance, closed her eyes with a grumble and promptly fell asleep.

Fenris was quiet for a while, his brow furrowed, one hand smoothing the folds in the blanket around his daughter’s chin (“pudgy,” Hawke had defended to Varric, “and not as fat as yours,”) while Hawke was content to watch them. Finally he sighed and looked up at her.

“Hawke,” he began, very seriously, and steeled himself to say what he felt compelled to. “Forgive me. I think I love Maeve - more than I do you.”

She blinked at him, and there was an apology somewhere on his lips when she leant across the table, took his face in both her hands and kissed him. She was a _strange_ woman, he thought, as he wound his free hand in her hair and held her to him. She kissed him firmly again, turned her face to his cheek and laughed.

“Hawke – “

“Shush. You – “ She laughed again and stood the rest of the way to move around the table. She sat across his knees, draping one arm around his shoulders and moving her other hand to support the sleeping baby between them. “It’s normal, you know,” she sighed, content, and rested her forehead against his.

“Mm." He wrapped his free arm around her waist. "You’re not offended.”

“I think I’d be more offended if you didn’t. On her behalf, anyway.”

Fenris murmured his agreement and tilted his face up to kiss her. He paused, stilled against her mouth and shifted his legs uncomfortably. He grimaced. “Hawke?”

“Yes, Fenris.”

“You said you ate some of the currant cakes?"

“I did.”

“Did you – eat _all_ of the currant cakes?”

“Well, _now_ I’m offended.”

* * *

 There’s a weight that feels suspiciously like a small knee digging into his chest.

“Mama, I poked his eye.”

“Don’t do that, you’ll wake him up.”

“Yes.”

The knee is joined by another knee and the rest of its body, and a little hand pats his cheek. “I’ll just wake him up a little.”

“Eh, suit yourself.”

When the patting doesn’t stop Fenris opens one eye (the poked one, judging from the stinging sensation) and frowns at the two faces peering down at him. Hawke quickly straightens and waves a hand at their daughter. “It was her idea.”

He blinks slowly, shakes the fog of sleep from his head. “Yet it seems you were a willing accomplice.”

“I woke you up, Papa!” Maeve gives his chest a hearty whack in delight.

“Indeed.” He catches her fists before she can further demonstrate her satisfaction and sits up. Maeve plonks backward onto his legs and beams upside-down at Hawke. “He’s awake now, Mama.”

“So he is! Well done.”

“You are very _welcome!_ ” She sings the last word, and flails her legs and arms in the air like a tipped-over beetle until Fenris takes his cue and lifts her to the floor. “I’m just going outside,” she calls back to them, and she skips from the bedroom.

“Stay out of the hedge!” Hawke shouts after her. There’s a wild cackle as the front door shuts. “She’ll be the death of me, I know she will.” She sighs and moves to sit cross-legged next to Fenris on the bed. He stretches; smiles crookedly at her. “A sentiment I am familiar with.”

“How rude. I don’t go running into thorny hedges.”

“Only templars and slavers.”

“Which come with much less risk of blood-letting. Good sleep?”

“No.” He stifles a yawn and rubs the heel of his hand at his eyes. “Too many dreams.”

“Ooh.” Hawke waggles her eyebrows at him. “Saucy dreams or scary dreams?”

“Neither. They were unsettling.” He sighs and leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His head feels like it’s too heavy for his neck. “Things that had happened before, I think. When I was a child.”

“Oh, I bet you were _adorable._ ” She clasps her hands to her chest. “All big, sad eyes.”

“Hawke.”

“Alright.” She holds out her hand, palm up, and after a moment he links his fingers with hers. She smiles. “Bet you were though.”

He looks at her then, and he looks so _tired._ Hawke’s breath hitches in her throat and she brings his hand to her lips, kisses the markings below his knuckles. His grip tightens around her fingers. “I do not remember.”

“Hm _._ ” She turns his hand over and presses her lips to his palm.“I _could_ write to your sister, ask her to draw a portrait of you as a baby. We could hang it above the mantelpiece. Or have it printed on postcards to send to everyone! Merrill would be terribly excited.”

“ _Hawke,_ " and in his voice is a warning, "we’ve _talked_ about this. I do not wish to see her.”

“I think you do.”

“I have no need of her. I have a family.”

She smiles softly at him, counting heartbeats. “You do. And she could be part of it.”

The words are well-practised and fall out of him like rote. “I do not want her to be part of it.”

“You can keep saying that if you fancy. I know you’ve been changing your mind about it for at least four years.” She blows the air out of her cheeks and figures she’s past the point of no return; decides to charge ahead like a great galloping thing. “You want to get to know her, and you want to know more about yourself, and you want her to meet Maeve. The only thing stopping you is that you also want to carry on hating her because you think that’s what you _should_ be doing. Family is family, Fenris,” and her voice turns harsher than she means it to be. “Neither of us have much of that left. You can’t give up on it after one go.”

His yanks his hand from hers; eyes dark, and he opens his mouth to snap at her before catching himself. Instead he turns his head and stares at the wall, clenching and unclenching his fists until his fingernails leave crescent moon scratches in his palms.

It takes a few moments before she’s sure he’s not going to get up and leave, and then Hawke reaches out and lightly places her hand on his shoulder. He softens at her touch. She feels the muscles in his arms relax and he turns back to her.

“Forgive me,” he says quietly, and lets out a heavy rush of air as he exhales. She knows then that he has decided, has given up; he has the same look of resignation on his face that he wears when Maeve declares they’re going to play plague wagon and he has to be the body. “You’re – right. What would you have me do?”

“One letter. Sent from any tavern two towns over. If she doesn’t reply, we won’t mention it again.”

“And if she does?”

“We invite her to visit. At the same place. She probably won’t bring any magisters this time, but if she does at least they won’t be at our house.” She ignores his scowl and grins at him. “You can thank me later, when we’re all sharing family cheer by the fire and swapping dumpling recipes.”

“Your distorted sense of reality is what gets you into trouble.”

“I like to think of it as jaunty optimism, but there you go.”

He smiles at her then, still tired she thinks, but he looks relieved as well. “How are you able to get inside my head, Hawke?”

“Well, you know me,” she rises onto her knees and places her palms on either side of him. “I’m good at getting into lots of places.”

His arms are around her waist and he’s dragging her against him when there’s a loud bellow from outside.

“Mama! Papa! I’M STUCK IN THE HEDGE.”

* * *

 It's spring when they receive a reply, and Hawke is moping.

“She’s very….small.”

“I believe that is usual for children.”

“No, she’s…” She sighs and glances over shoulder at Maeve clambering over her mabari. “Fereldan children should be fat and jolly. She should be twice the size she is now.”

“She’s only half Fereldan.” Fenris opens his eyes from where he sits against the garden fence in the sun. He watches as Hawke stabs a trowel into the icy ground, and shifts his gaze to their daughter. “Hawke, she’s drawing warpaint on your hound.”

“Where did she get that from? Maker’s breath, I hope that’s mud she’s smearing over him. _Maeve!_ That better be mud! Back in a jiffy.”

It takes a few jiffies for Hawke to untangle dog and child and to confirm that the substance in question is certainly _not_ mud, and a great deal more to throw buckets of water over the two of them, and to then comfort the wailing child who throws herself at Fenris and the wailing dog who throws himself at Hawke, until finally they’re all warm and dry and mostly unscathed and sitting by the fire.

“I mean, look at her. All legs and arms and bones like a baby bird.” Hawke stops towelling Maeve’s hair and frowns down at her.

“He was _pretty,_ ” Maeve whines, and her eyes fill with tears again.

“You can’t smear shit over the dog, darling,” Hawke soothes. “We’ll get you some mud next time.” She shrugs at Fenris when he raises an eyebrow at her. “Why don’t you use some from the vegetable plot?”

“Can’t,” she replies glumly, “it’s all gone.”

“ _All_ of it? The mud. From the entire vegetable plot.”

“I put it in the pond.”

“Right. Ugh,” She grimaces and plucks Maeve off her lap, dumping her, towel and all, into Fenris’s arms. “She’s yours now.”

Fenris keeps his smile in check as he resumes the hair-drying. “What you said before…being fat and – jolly. I assumed you all grew up hardy on a diet of grains and potatoes.”

“Oh, we’re plenty hardy. But we’re big eaters. Like whales.”

“I’ve noticed that aspect of you. You would compare yourself to a whale?”

“Don’t question me.” Hawke sniffs and turns her nose up, winks at Maeve which causes her to collapse in a fit of giggles against Fenris’s chest. “As I was _saying_. We didn’t have tiny Orlesian cakes, but there was always some sort of meat for breakfast, and we had stews and bread puddings and gravy – oh, the _gravy._ And everyone knows Fereldan children grow fat on turnips and lard. You ever tried lard, Fenris?”

“No,” he says flatly, and gathers the now-spent and wilted child in his arms. “And I have no desire to.”

“Oh, we used to have lard on _toast._ ” Hawke sighs wistfully and leans back against her dozing mabari. “Carver was so round I could push him down a hill and he’d roll for miles.” She pauses. “Big hills around Lothering, you see. You would have been a tiny scrap, I imagine.”

His brows knit together as he tries to recall something to give her. “We ate well in Seheron, I think. There was a lot of fish.” He wrinkles his nose. “But slaves in Tevinter are fed poorly, and not often.”

“No,” she says softly, and reaches out to place her hand over his. “Well, I suppose we’ll learn more soon.”

He doesn’t answer, but Maeve yawns and snuggles her head further into her father’s shirt. “Pretty,” she murmurs, stroking the lyrium lines on his throat. Her eyes well with tears again. “ _Dog_ was pretty.”

“This is your fault, Hawke.” Fenris scowls at her over their daughter’s head, though he’s not sure what he means.

“Don’t go blaming me. You’re the pretty one.”

* * *

 Varania has a new cloak. It’s dark grey, and woollen, and it seems quite ridiculous to be focusing on a new grey cloak when it’s been years since he saw his sister. But the woman sitting opposite him feels less like a sister than she does an enemy, and he struggles to find any desire to speak to her as one.

“You look well.” His voice is stiff, forced, and he’s sure she’s entirely aware of how much he doesn’t want to be here at the same time as he _absolutely_ wants to be.

Her colour is better than the last time he saw her. She is older, but her cheeks have filled out, and the hard lines around her eyes seem less of desperation and more of apprehension. She fidgets, clasping her hands together at her waist and then dropping them to her sides. “I am. Thank you – for the money.” She looks like she’d rather bite her tongue off than speak the words. “It has helped.”

Fenris stares at her. “The money.”

Her eyes dart back to him, and while she looks less like the cornered rabbit she did five minutes ago, she still seems to be balanced on the edge of her seat, ready to flee the moment he turns on her. “The money you’ve been sending. Since…after Danarius.”

Realisation dawns and he grits his teeth. “Hawke’s been sending you _money._ ”

“It wasn’t - ? I’m sorry, I thought it was you; the letters said – “

“Forget it.” Fenris sighs and looks past her, moving his eyes over the shadowed corners of the tavern. “You didn’t bring anyone with you.”

It wasn’t a question but she can hear the suspicion in his voice; her eyes darken in the dim light and she jerks upright. “You thought I _would?_ ” She hisses, and he can see the hard set of his own mouth reflected on her face.

“After the last time we met!?” He spits back at her, and the words taste bitter on his tongue. “After you led Danarius to me? Can you blame me for thinking you are still capable of the same?”

“I blame you for many things, Leto!”

Cold settles around his throat like an iron cuff.

He knows there is anguish in his eyes; he forces it back, replaces it with something easier – anger that is always quicker to answer, safer to feel. “You know _nothing_ of the things I went through. Nothing of the life I’ve had to lead!”

“And you know nothing of mine!” Varania shoves her chair back, stands and gathers her cloak. “This can never work. I was a fool to think it could.”

“Wait!” He half-stands to follow her and his voice is more pleading than he intended. He swallows and tries again. “Wait. Please.”

She stops; looks back at him where he is stooped over the table, knuckles turning white where he grips the wood. Blue light flickers weakly across his skin, and all at once the fight goes out of her and she drops heavily into her chair. She curls her fingers, long and thin but cracked with calluses into the wool of her new cloak. She hugs it tightly to her chest. Fenris feels his legs go and he sits; sucks in a deep breath. “Varania – “

“I’m _sorry_ , Leto. I did not intend to fight with you when I came here.”

His eyes are guarded, but there is a desperation there that pulls at her; their mother’s eyes that always looked wrong in his face even as a child; careful eyes on a boy that was everything but careful. It hurts to look at him, but she thinks it would hurt more if she didn’t. “We have both changed, Leto. Very much. Our lives are different.” When he says nothing, she sighs heavily and picks at the seam on her cloak. “I thought you might bring the Champion with you,” she offers.

“She is…at home.”

“With the child?”

He tenses at the mention and she smiles a little. “Am I not to meet my niece, then? What is her name?”

Part of him wants anxiously to refuse, to tell her nothing of his daughter. Maeve is his; his and Hawke’s and why should she ever be exposed to the parts of his life that are filled with hate and hurt? He tastes bile in the back of his throat, swallows thickly and remembers he told Hawke he would _try._ “She is called Maeve.”

“It’s pretty. It’s not a name I know.”

“It’s from Hawke’s family. I – we wanted her name to be Fereldan.”

“May I meet her?”

He hesitates.

 _Try._ “Yes.”

“Good.” She nods at him, briskly, and finds something she can speak of more easily. “Would you like to talk about when we were younger? I could tell you of Seheron.”

His pulse quickens. “I would.”

“I will get us something to drink, then. Wine?”

She has stood and crossed to the bar before he can respond.

It’s fake conversation; he knows it and he’s sure she knows it too – back and forth questions and answers, polite and distant like they're two normal people discussing the day’s events. He doesn’t understand much of what she says – he was _how_ old, and did this person convert to the Qun or were they allied with the Imperium or was that the fisherman? – but she seems eager to talk; she speaks quickly, as if the stories are easier to manage than the silence that might follow.

It is later, much later, and they have finished the second bottle of wine – more to dull the tension than because they’d been taken by any sense of merriment – and retired to their rooms when Fenris feels exhausted.

Varania pauses at her door. “Goodnight, brother,” she says cautiously, testing it out.

“Goodnight,” he answers, and keeps his eyes on a knot in the door frame.

He collapses onto the sagging mattress once he’s inside and rubs at his eyes. He feels past tired, like he’s been running through sand for the better part of the day whilst carrying a dwarf. Or two dwarves, if they were quite little. Littler.

His head is full of Varania and wine and the places and people she spoke of; stories he tried to keep up with but lost the threads halfway through. “Sister,” he murmurs to the wall. It's a strange word and it feels unnatural on his tongue. “Varania.”

Sleep is blessedly easy, and in the morning she is still there, and he is, and they seem as surprised as each other.

* * *

 “Stop _fidgeting._ I can’t put your hair up if you keep wriggling.”

“My legs want to _play._ ” Maeve huffs and lets her mother pull her hair into a ponytail at the top of her head. “Do I need to hide when the people come today?"

"No," Hawke answers, and tries to scoop up the wisps by her ears. "But good girl for remembering."

"I'm good at hiding. I'm practising! I'll show you. But - I need to go get my leather boots. They are best for sneaking. Because," her voice lowers and she bobs her head dramatically, "they are made of _hide._ "

Hawke snorts. "Who have you been talking to? I'll put silver on you not even understanding that. No - _stay_ here, we're not finished." She pulls her back before she can wriggle off the bed. "I'm glad you've been practising; Maker forbid you should ever need to do it for real. Anyway, it will be your father and his sister."

"I miss Papa. He’s been gone _weeks._ ”

“He’s been gone two days.”

“Weeks!” She wails and flings herself face down onto the bed. Hawke can make out some muffled cries of ‘pigeons’ and ‘all alone’.

“Honestly, I don’t know where you get all the dramatics from.” She heaves her daughter up and starts tying a wide piece of red cloth into an oversized ribbon in her hair. “Not my side, at any rate. We were all very serious growing up.”

Maeve sniffs and frowns suspiciously up at her. “You were?”

“Oh, yes!” Hawke wraps her arms around her daughter’s middle and presses mad kisses to her cheek. “Completely serious! No smiling allowed!”

“No!” She struggles against her. “That game is hard.”

“It is. Your father’s good at it, though.” And when Maeve’s lip starts quivering, “don’t you start. He’ll be home any minute with your aunt.”

She looks suspicious again. “Isabela?”

“No, a new aunt. You haven’t met this one before.”

“Will she bring me sweets?”

“Ah, no. But she’s your father’s sister, so we’re going to be very nice to her. Even if he isn’t.”

“Auntie Isabela brings me sweets.”

“Forget the sweets.” Hawke stands up and lifts Maeve to the floor. “She might be shy, because she hasn’t met you before. But she’s part of our family, so we have to show her we love her. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She nods sagely. “There are no sweets.”

“Ugh. Spoiled, you are. Spoiled rotten!” Hawke scoops her up and carries her through to the kitchen. “Why don’t you go outside and chase the chickens? I’ll sort us all some lunch for when they get here.” She sets Maeve on her feet and watches as she dashes outside. A shriek of ‘chicken-chaser!’ is heard through the window.

There are plates of bread and cheese and dried meat on the table before Maeve’s done, and Hawke has enough time to set out some fruit and redo her hair – how do the feathers get stuck _in_ the ribbon? – before there’s a noise at the gate, and Maeve frees herself from her mother’s grasp and bounds out the door.

“No sense of self-preservation, that girl,” She murmurs, and follows her out into the sun. “One day it’ll be templars at the door.”

Maeve is in her father’s arms, her hands on either side of his face and she’s babbling away to him about pigeons. Varania stands a little to the side, staring at the two of them with something that looks to Hawke like grief. And something else - something lighter, perhaps, but it's hidden beneath so many coats of bitterness that it's hard to make out.

Hawke steps forward and smiles brightly at her. “Hello, Varania. Lovely to see you again. Much nicer without all those shades and reanimated corpses.” She moves to Fenris and kisses his cheek as Maeve moves on to the collection of dead leaves she’s been making in his absence. “And both in one piece, too! I’d say that’s a successful start.”

Varania looks flustered. She shifts the cloak and pack in her arms and tugs at the sleeves of her dress, rolled up to her shoulders in the heat. Hawke thinks she can see her skin beginning to freckle in the sun. “Champion. It’s…nice to see you." The woman dips her head in greeting. "And – thank you. For the money.”

“Oh, so you’ve talked about that. Good, good.” She ignores Fenris’s gaze. “And please, call me Hawke. Everyone else does. Sometimes I forget I even _have_ a first name.”

“Very well.” She nods and her gaze flicks back to the little girl.

Fenris hesitates, but he turns to her and tightens his arms around his daughter. “Maeve,” he says, and she stops chatting. “There is someone for you to meet.”

“Oh _yes_. I know,” she answers imperiously, and peers at Varania. “You are my New Aunt. But – I do not think you are very new. You look a bit old.”

A laugh bursts from Varania’s throat, and the sound is so foreign that Hawke gapes at her. Fenris stares in a similar fashion but manages to keep his mouth shut. Varania clears her throat and smiles at the girl as Hawke mouths ‘polite!’ in her direction. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I am Varania.”

Maeve catches her mother’s eye and lifts her chin, as much of an Amell as Hawke has ever seen her. “It is a pleasure to meet _you,_ ” she says carefully, and gives her a small nod. “Did you – perchance – bring me any sweets?”

* * *

 “And then we get the fish and then – then we throw it at the pigeons. And then we eat it.”

“After we have thrown it at the pigeons?” Sitting on the bench next to her niece, Varania looks sceptical. It is late, and dusk is just settling over the house. Fenris has cleared their plates from dinner and returned to sit beside Hawke, who is waving bits of apple in front of her daughter's face and looking generally displeased.

“Yes.” Maeve bangs her fist on the table in resolution. “But not if it’s a big fish. If it’s a big fish, we don’t throw it at the pigeons. Might break.”

“The pigeons?”

“No. The _fish._ ”

“I…see.” Varania glances across the table at Fenris, who is quiet and at Hawke, who grins at her and shoves the apple into her own mouth. “Your daughter is very spirited.”

“Barking mad, if you ask me. Must be from your side.”

“Oh, Leto was never as…creative.” She chuckles. “Though he was a very sweet boy.”

“ _Sweet!_ ” Hawke coos, and Fenris scowls at her.

“Oh yes." Varania smiles, and Hawke's lightness, forced or not, is encouraging. She's thankful for it. "Always so thoughtful. Our mother would only mention that her back hurt from cutting the sugarcane and before she could turn around he’d be out the door, dragging a blade as big as he was! Such a reckless child, though. So many times he’d limp back, covered head to toe in sugarsap, some graze or cut where he’d missed the cane altogether.” Her gaze flicks to Fenris. “You were forever getting under the feet of the Qunari who came around. They threatened mother they’d bring you into the Qun just to ‘correct your faults’ if you didn’t get out of their way. Mother used to say you came into the world without thought for yourself and decided to stay that way.”

He’s silent, but his eyes never leave his sister’s face and Hawke knows he’s listening intently.

“May I…call you Leto? That is, if you’d prefer –“ Part of her doesn’t want to ask in case he refuses, as if she’d finally have to admit that this man, so different to the boy she knew, was no longer her brother.

“No,” he answers, “call me how you wish.”

“Papa’s got lots of names!” Maeve pipes up helpfully. “Mama calls him Fenris. But sometimes she calls him Maker when they’re playing at night-time.”

Hawke’s face goes red as Fenris’s goes white. “And that’s enough of your charm for the evening, I think!” She rises quickly from the table and lifts Maeve to the floor as Varania tries to hide her smile. “Time for bed!”

“Can’t be bedtime; it’s not dark!”

“That’s the thing about summer, sweet. Come on, you're in our room tonight. I’ll tell you a story.”

Maeve stamps her foot, then stamps it again for good measure. “About pirates?”

“One pirate, yes.” Hawke winks at Fenris. “And about the pirate’s ridiculously good-looking friend from Ferelden, and a handsome elf and about all the exciting things they got up to with the rest of their friends.”

Maeve huffs loudly so they’re all aware of her displeasure, but she kisses Varania’s cheek and throws her arms around her father’s neck. “Goodnight, new aunt! Goodnight, Papa!” She declares, and allows herself to be led away.

“She would be very happy for you,” Varania murmurs as she and Fenris watch them go. “Mother.”

He looks back to her and meets her eyes. "I do not remember her. Things about her, things that she did. But never her face or her voice."

“She was beautiful, but perhaps I am just biased. She would have been very pleased to see you with them." She pauses. " _I_ am pleased for you.”

"Thank you," he answers, but it feels fake and everything feels fake, sitting here and speaking of old stories and ignoring the smog of resentment that hangs over the room. And what if it never ends? This terrible burn that feels like poison in his heart, because Danarius is dead but the memory of his master is in the woman that sits across from him and he can't let it go because it's _his_ pain and _his_ anger, and he's not sure what he is without it. He's not sure how he can _be_ without it.

“I – “ He stops.

 _Try._ For Maeve, whom he wants desperately to know her aunt; for Hawke, who has lost her own sister and watched him lose his once already. And for himself, for a chance to stop running from the things that he finds too difficult to face and because he knows he can love her if he just _tries._

He runs his hands through his hair; grasps fists of it until the stinging clears his head. “This is…difficult. I look at you and the first thing I feel is festering hate inside me. I  _want_ to be angry at you because I think I deserve to be. I suspect you feel something of the same?" There's acknowledgement in her face. He sighs. "I wonder if this can ever be easy.”

“I think it will be,” she says carefully. “Most things are dulled with time.”

As if it is easy. As if it could be.

The lyrium markings on his hands glow dimly. He clenches his fists. “Did I believe I was doing the right thing?” He asks, nodding at his hands.

“I think so. You thought being liberati would be better than being a slave. But the Imperium is built upon its slaves. It is not accustomed to them being free." Her lips twist into a thin smile. "And the one thing they look down on more than a slave who lies in the muck is a slave who tries to stand and walk away from it.”

She plucks their bottle of wine from the table and refills her glass. “I spent so long pouring my pain and anger onto you. It is easier to blame you for the way my life went rather than admit that it was a terrible time for all of us. Sometimes I still feel that way. I am striving not to. …After all, you were trying to help us.” She closes her eyes for a moment, opens them and gazes at the reflection of the wine on her hands. “Always trying to help,” she murmurs, and downs the rest of her glass.

He stands to get another bottle, and Hawke pokes her head around their bedroom door and whispers something about dumplings to him.

It surprises him, as it always has, how resilient a heart can be when he’s so used to seeing them ripped out and half-beating in his hand. Wounds may be clawed by a family torn apart, by a whip or the burning of a brand or by a little lost son, but the holes can be filled by a wife and a daughter and the outstretched hand of a woman whose face you only half remember – not healed _all_ the way; he is too jaded and bitter to be foolish enough to think that they could. Time may dull all things, but the scars are still on his body and hers and seared across their hearts.

He sits back down.

But it’s a start, he thinks, as his sister smiles.


End file.
